Introduction

Contact

Welcome to xbomber.co.uk, home of X-Bomber. X-Bomber is a freeware video game for Windows™ PCs. It is a fast, modern 2D vertical-scrolling Spaceshooter. It is based on the 80s Japanese manga sci-fi show Star Fleet and features lots of hectic arcade action, weapons and explosions.

Random Images

News

Against SOPA

[ http://sopastrike.com/ ]

[ 2012.01.20 ] - Update:
SOPA and PIPA bills were dropped by the Senate today. The record industry lobbyists and Rupert Murdoch had to make a wholesale back-down. Well done, everyone!

 // Section Divider Type 3

XPS M1730 Up and Running

My Dell XPS M1730 is back in action!
It took the company less than 3 hours to go from emailing me to say that they'd received the machine to emailing me to say that it was on its way back, repaired.
That's some service.

I'm really pleased to have this machine back again even though I could have traded it in for an Alienware if it'd been beyond economical repair.
Besides the fact that the machine is very fast and dependable, I love the fact that it really makes a statement.
It's a monster of a notebook but it's really stylish. It has this glossy, marble-like finish and everything, and I mean everything, lights-up.

The dual graphics work a treat again and I've managed to get my X-Bomber materials back onto the machine for editing.
At the moment, I'm rebuilding the Mission Briefing screen totally from scratch (because its performance stank) as well as finishing the new Mission Selector.
It's all taking quite a while but it'll be great in the end.

The main engine now features the ability to index the songs in its mp3 folder and play them at random, allowing you to customise the game's soundtrack should the supplied music prove unsatisfactory.
This is in addition to a number of other features in the engine that I've chucked in over the last few weeks.

 // Section Divider Type 3

Dell XPS m1730 SLI Failure

Unfortunately, the second graphics card on my Dell XPS m1730 seems to have died.

The Dell XPS m1730 SLI graphics cards are apparently two cores, logic boards and heatsinks in a single module. It's effectively one, dual-GPU card.
So, when one core overheats and fails, its not like the machine can just turn off one entire graphics card and continue without it properly because the two cores are part of the same unit.
Certainly, once one core failed, my machine behaved really strangely; failing to boot sometimes, freezing up and just doing some really weird s***.

It's a real shame in a sense because the m1730 is a superb development machine and performed great but it's lucky that it failed within its warranty. I still kinda feel like someone shot my dog because I'm told that the beast might not be fixable since the graphics cards aren't made for that model anymore.

I'm not quite sure how the DELL partner I bought it from can repair the machine without a replacement graphics unit (???). I just hope they don't try baking the card to make the solder run back and re-seal the connections.
If the problem is actually in the GPU core, rather than the logic board, I doubt it'll help at all anyway.

If it can't be fixed, I'll just try to apply the refund of my m1730's cost to one of the Alienware machines available on their site.

 // Section Divider Type 3

New Briefing Screen

So, X-Bomber is having its briefing screen taken apart and rebuilt (from scratch).
I found, by running it in windowed mode, that it was running at 30fps while hosing up 68% of my Core2Extreme X9000's CPU time.

There were lots of string objects created in the old multimedia fusion with weird icons and options and there was a quick background object that was hosing about 30% CPU time by its own self. (!!!)

The method by which the game printed the mission briefings; character by character was also hosing a vast amount of CPU continuously. First, I made it so that it only ran when it detected that it hadn't yet printed the entire page. I also streamlined it to use fewer strings to store the mission briefing pages by consolidating them into one and gave it a simpler expression.
Now the system uses about 10% CPU and gives a constant 50FPS, even when printing.
If found that lots of Tab stops in the briefing pages gummed things up and weren't displayed anyway.

I'm also using the Embed Fonts object to make greater use of custom fonts while reducing disk space by not having to have text stored as images.

 // Section Divider Type 3

Cleanup

I devised some methods of removing some 'stuck' objects from the game. Sometimes, when an object isn't needed in your application, it doesn't get deleted by Multimedia Fusion like it should. I don't know if these objects are a problem instead of just a nuisance but I found a pretty good way to nuke them in a hurry.
Using the "Show Created Items", you can rebuild your levels in a hurry in a new frame, removing the false dependency on the objects that aren't used but weren't removed. I'm working my way through this process for all levels. They might be more reliable that way and it'll definitely make me happier by removing clutter that shouldn't be there.

The game is looking great. I've given it dozens of little graphical fixes. We're getting close to releasing the next version.